


The Cheese Stands Alone

by shadydave



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett, Dresden Files - Jim Butcher
Genre: Changelings, Crossover, Gen, Jossed, The Frying Pan of Doom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-31
Updated: 2012-10-31
Packaged: 2017-11-17 12:14:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/551474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadydave/pseuds/shadydave
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Winter Knight gets stuck between a rock and a hard place. No, not the one near Slice.</p><p>ETA: Now with 100% more canon AU action from <i>Cold Days</i>!</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Cheese Stands Alone

I woke up from a dream of eating crackers and cheese whiz and started to cry.

Dammit.

Don’t ever eat fairy food. The stories are pretty adamant about that. But too many regrettable yet necessary decisions had gotten me stuck in the Nevernever for the foreseeable future, playing the Knight of Winter despite my best efforts to the contrary. _For some reason_ , nobody trusted me to just drop by the real world and grab a sandwich – or, more likely, they just wanted to make me suffer. While I managed to resist the sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll (Maeve’s band did awesome instrumental Journey covers, which was frankly just disturbing), a man’s got to eat, and, well. It would be hard for me to be _more_ beholden to the Queen of Air and Darkness at this point.

Well, no, it wasn’t that hard. Unfortunately. When I wasn’t dreaming of delicious, delicious junk food, I was having nightmares of losing even the illusion of choice in carrying out my duties as the Winter Knight. But eating the food wouldn’t do it, and dammit, I wasn’t going to skip lunch in addition to becoming the very thing I hated.

The thing about fairy food, though – even the heartbreakingly perfect feasts of a court of the Sidhe, even the choicest of those morsels being fed to the Winter Knight whenever someone wanted to curry favor or make a point or mess with my head, which was always – was that you were _always_ hungry half an hour later. And you didn’t even get a fortune cookie out of the deal.

The mind and the spirit might have been convinced that I was well-fed, but my body didn’t buy it for long, and it was getting its revenge with the worst cravings I had ever experienced. We’re talking the wading-through-a-blizzard-to-get-pickles level of cravings, here. It figured that the one time I was fully equipped to wade through a blizzard, in a blaze of Winter-fuelled power, there were no pickles to be had.

And so I dreamed of coffee, and Coke, and steak and fries and Mac’s brown ale, and bologna sandwiches, and Charity Carpenter’s spaghetti and meatballs in bulk, and the pink monstrosities with sprinkles Murphy had gotten from Hey Cupcake for me on my birthday, and Whoppers and those little apple pies from Burger King, and Molly’s burnt eggs, and apples and strawberries and fresh-baked bread and celery and carrots and broccoli.

I don’t even like broccoli.

I figured that this job would drive me crazy in fairly short order. I just didn’t count on it being caused by my stomach constantly demanding a slice of Meat Lover’s Extravaganza from Pizza Spress. Hell, I’d probably kill just for a slice of real cheese – I mean, as long as who- or whatever it was was a bad person too stupid to get out of my way. I hadn’t gone crazy yet.

Well, not totally.

As far as I can tell, the Sidhe only eat when it amuses them enough to do so. _What_ they eat is pretty much determined by amusement, too. Which was why I was slightly concerned when I showed up at the Winter Lady’s lair, and Maeve was cooing over a baby.

~*~*~*~

“You’ve done well, Jen,” said Maeve, grinning predatorily down at the sleeping child. It was a disturbing tableau – one siren/selkie/mermaid with veridian teeth and a set of nasty scars from being snarfled by some werewolves, one Sidhe fairy queen wearing sparkly lingerie and silver stripper boots (literally – there were dollar bills shoved in the massive transparent platforms), and one small human wrapped in a pink blanket embroidered in ducks. All of them were drooling. “Very well indeed.”

Oddly, Jenny Greenteeth’s million-dollar (in terms of color) smile abruptly fell off her face. “My lady – the Queen—”

“The Queen may be content to let a mortal defy us, but I am not,” said Maeve.

“Of course, my lady,” said Jen. She rubbed her face nervously. “But – she interrupted the Queen’s dreaming! And you saw how she seduced the Wintersmith and released the Summer Lady—” Jen obviously realized she was sailing in iceberg-infested waters. “I know you have the resources to destroy her,” she concluded.

Maeve looked up abruptly and caught me trying to sneak closer. I didn’t know how in hell I was supposed to help the kid, but I had to try. I looked away before she could catch my eye and start a soulgaze.

I hadn’t thought her smile could get any creepier, but I was wrong. “Yes,” said Maeve. “I do. Sir Knight!”

“Yes, my lady?” I asked.

“An intruder may trespass on our realm,” she said. “Find her and stop her.”

“Yes, my lady,” I gritted out.

“My lady,” Jen all but whispered. “What about... them?”

Maeve gave her a look like January in Wisconsin, then laughed, a sound like silver bells that somehow grated across my nerves like nails on a chalkboard.

The baby woke up and started to cry.

~*~*~*~

I was sent to a group of standing stones on the Borderlands. Strictly speaking, I didn’t think this was Maeve’s territory, but as it seemed to consist only of open plain with the occasional patch of dark forest, maybe it didn’t matter, right up until it did.

Things felt... weird out here. Thinner. It almost made me miss the solidity of Arctis Tor.

I thought I saw some dromes in the trees: dreamspinners, they’re sometimes called. You _definitely_ didn’t want to eat the food when you were stuck in their dream, or else you’d starve to death without ever waking up.

I found a circle of trilithons, clearly marking the border. The border with what – now _that_ was the question.

“In ancient times,” I intoned sonorously, “Hundreds of years before the dawn of history, an ancient race of people: the Druids. No one knows who they were or what they were doing...”

My fairy steed snorted and shook his head.

“You are a cultural Philistine,” I said, and waited for the trespasser. Who had managed to rattle Jenny Greenteeth, interrupted the Queen’s dreaming (whatever that was), and foiled one of Maeve’s plots against her Summer counterpart.

Back in the day, I would have said I was totally screwed. And maybe I was, but the funny thing about hitting rock bottom is that literally everything else looks better by comparison. Now I just wondered if maybe I could shake this person’s hand or give her a medal before the inevitable fight. Or maybe she’d actually listen to reason, and we could resolve this peacefully.

Yeah, and maybe I’m a Chinese jet pilot.

I started to circle the standing stones, but a quarter of the way around, my horse shied away from something on the ground. I sighed and dismounted. “Stay,” I said to my horse. He tried to bite me.

I extended my senses as I walked towards the object, just in case I was about to trigger an ambush. Nothing happened, so I knelt down, still watchful, defenses held at the ready.

It was a frying pan. A really big cast iron one, the kind Charity Carpenter always used (and always unconsciously hefted in an ominous fashion when I was around), designed for eggs by the dozen. It lay in the middle of a ring entirely empty of snow, and the turf around it looked... melted. I’d say it had been there for a while, but time and the Nevernever didn’t really have more than a casual acquaintance, so for all I knew it could have been there for ten minutes, ten years, or ten centuries.

What I did know was that no fairy put it there. Cold iron was anathema to them, and using it in a fight was the equivalent of engaging in chemical warfare. My job would be a lot easier if I used iron or steel weaponry, but the disgust and hatred I’d collect meant it wasn’t worth the trouble ever since I was stuck here long-term. Well, except sometimes.

If this was the trespasser’s, then she’d been unconventionally but well-armed. Against physical attacks, anyway.

I left the frying pan where it was and stood up, surveying the landscape. Nothing happened. I continued my revolution of the standing stones, and more nothing happened.

The wind blew, the trees rustled, and I glared at a distant drome until it oozed away.

Meanwhile, nothing happened.

It was possible I been sent here as a trick, but I didn’t think so. Maeve’s little pranks didn’t really go in for the “boring you to death” angle so much as the “Whoops, didn’t I tell you about the scorpion pit?” angle.

Something flickered in the corner of my eye, in the middle of one of the trilithons: like a curtain blowing in the wind, revealing the view to the other side.

I held my hand out about an inch from one of the stones and reached out with my senses. Besides the faintest of tingles, there was nothing. I gingerly touched the stone.

It didn’t explode, which just made me nervous. After a moment, I withdrew my hand, took a deep breath, and stepped through into the circle—

—And nearly collapsed as I left behind a good proportion of my strength. A threshold? Connected to the Nevernever?

Snow blew out after me, coating the turf about ten feet in all directions. In front of me were rolling green hills, dotted with fluffy white sheep. Behind me, through the stones, lay the Borderlands of Winter.

Above me fell a Smurf.

“NAC MAC FEEGLE WAE HAE!” it cried.

I raised my left hand to form a shield, staggering at the effort it took. Kamikaze Smurf bounced off it once, and it shattered. He fell through and grabbed my shirt.

“Ye bairn-napping scunner, I’ll show ye a faceful o’ dandruff!” he shouted as I flailed at him in a manly fashion befitting a warrior. The Smurf swarmed up my collar, scaled my nose, grabbed both of my eyebrows, and head-butted me right in the middle of my forehead.

It was like getting hit by a ten-ton weight the size of a nickel. We both fell backwards. I sat down heavily on the snowy grass, little pink embroidered ducks swimming before my eyes.

“Nae Quin! Nae Laird! Wee Free Men!”

“There c'n only be whin t'ousand!!”

“Bigjobs!”

“CHARGE!”

“Oh, come _on_ ,” I said, stumbling to my feet as a hundreds of tiny figures surged up out of the grass at me. “ _Arctis_!”

The Smurfs zipped around the weak flames and kept coming.

Kamikaze Smurf sat up blearily. “Crivens, he’s got a heid on ‘im like a tree!”

Someone hit me in the face with a frying pan.

“Good,” said another voice, as everything went black.

~*~*~*~

I woke up with a blinding headache, opened my eyes, and found a buzzard watching me. Well, that wasn’t disturbing or anything.

It had Aviator Smurf sitting on its back. “Ach, ‘e’s wakin’!” he said.

I blinked a few times and seriously debated falling back into unconsciousness and letting everyone kill me on their own time. Instead, I groaned and flopped my head over in the other direction. That view contained the cast of thousands from _Braveheart Smurf_ and a pair of sturdy-looking black boots, which was more unexpected but not a noticeable improvement.

Squinting, I determined that the boots belonged to a green dress, which in turn belonged to a young woman – younger than Molly, and shorter too – with brown hair and brown eyes and a distinct aura of anger. And a blanket-wrapped bundle strapped to her back. And a frying pan of her own, which I had a feeling matched the frying pan-shaped dent in my skull.

“Man,” I said, “The Amish are _mean_.”

“‘Ware the scuggan,” said Papa Smurf – or so I assumed. He was wearing a kilt instead of pants, and his beard was red, not white, and he had a helmet made out of a rabbit skull instead of a little hat. Ok, so maybe he wasn’t like Papa Smurf at all, but he did have an air of authority. Or maybe that was the smell. “The Quin’s ane kniggit, he is!”

“He may be the Queen’s, but he’s human,” said the young woman, gesturing with her frying pan. “In my hills. I will deal with him.”

Yeah, _that_ sounded promising. I started to sit up, and hundreds of swords the size of steak knives were suddenly held _en garde_.

“You know what?” I said. “I like it down here.” I lowered my aching head back onto the melting snow. “I don’t suppose a round of introductions is in order before we try to fight each other some more?”

“I am Tiffany Aching,” said the young woman. The Smurfs all gasped – names were powerful business. A few of them started shouting _waily waily!_ and running around in circles, although they didn’t need to bother. Sure, I could try to bend Tiffany Aching to my will – assuming she thought of herself as Tiffany Aching. While she was standing right there. On her own turf. With her frying pan. “Where is the child?”

“What?”

“The big wee Chuffley bairn, ye mudlin!” said Papa Smurf.

I blinked at him. “You know, that really didn’t clarify anything.” I tried to turn my head too quickly, and flinched. Tiffany frowned, then leaned over and did... something.

My headache was gone.

Not healed – I could feel the goose-egg on my noggin, and my vision was still a little funny around the edges. But there was no pain, like she had just... made it go.

And I hadn't felt a thing. No magic, no mind-whammy, nothing.

My skin crawled.

“What did you do to me?” I demanded.

“I took your pain away,” said Tiffany. “It seemed only fair.” She evaluated me for a moment, then added, grudgingly, “It’s still there, if you want it back.”

“I’ll live,” I said with reasonable certainty. “Am I supposed to be impressed?”

“No,” said the woman. “You're supposed to answer the questions. You are a Knight of Winter. The Winter Lady stole a child from _me_. Where is she?”

I let my head roll back and stared straight up at the cloudy sky. My stomach roiled, and it wasn’t just from being clocked in the head. “Harry Dresden,” I said. “She’s your daughter?”

Tiffany leaned over to look me in the face. Over her shoulder I could see a tuft of green hair from a sleeping changeling’s head. I closed my eyes.

“No,” she said. “But she is under my protection. I intend to get her back.”

I swallowed. “So there’s no chance that you’ll just go home and tell her parents that she naturally got a lot uglier and her hair turned green.”

“She belongs to the Chalk, and the Chalk is _mine_ ,” said Tiffany, her voice suddenly a lot closer. My eyes snapped open – and I fell right into a soulgaze.

Tiffany’s soul looked – well, a lot like Tiffany, standing in a green field that seemed to stretch on forever. She was slightly taller and had a black cloak that billowed in a non-existent breeze. One half of her was drenched in sunlight and golden flames, and the other stood in shadow. She had a black pointy hat – the witch classic – except it sparkled with all the stars of the night sky.

I heard the crash of waves and distant hoof-beats. I thought I caught a flash of a white figure – not a horse, but maybe what a horse would be if all you could see was its speed and grace and freedom.

I jerked my head to the side, breaking the connection.

Tiffany still leaned over me. She was looking at me thoughtfully, which I suppose was an improvement over fainting or crying or immediately trying to kill me.

“I thought so,” she said. She offered me her hand. I took it.

You can usually tell when someone else is a practitioner of magic, unless they’re very weak or very good at hiding it. But I didn’t feel anything like the normal spark from Tiffany, just a slow rumble. Like a cat purring.

Or the ocean roaring.

She helped me sit up.

“Harry Dresden,” she said. “Help me, please.”

I had known Tiffany Aching for all of five minutes, three of which were spent unconscious, but she didn’t exactly strike me as the kind of person to just casually ask for aid. She had already repelled the schemes of two of the most powerful Sidhe – not just in Winter, but in the Nevernever. She had managed to raise a threshold for her whole _country_. And she was being helped by the Smu – Nac Mac Feegle, which some distant memory was shrieking was highly significant in some way.

And I had to tell her no.

“I wish I could,” I said. “I really do. When my daughter was taken, I swore I’d do anything – and I did. I lied, I killed, I tampered in God’s domain.” I took a deep breath. “And that’s why I’m here,” I said. “I can’t let you through.”

I nearly jumped out of my skin when all the Nac Mac Feegle started to applaud.

“Spoken wi’ true sperrit!” said Papa Smurf. “Ach, sir wizzarrrrrd, but we shall mourn ye greatly when we kill ye!”

Accents like Billy Connolly on steroids, tats like a frostbitten Leopard Man, six inches tall. Nac Mac Feegle, Nac Mac Feegle – oh, _those_ Nac Mac Feegle.

Still spoken of as some of the most dangerous creatures in fairy land. The only beings to be exiled from the Nevernever for _fighting_ too much. They could steal anything, were faster than thought, and fierce like a thunderstorm.

Smelly as all get-out, too.

I didn’t say that out loud, though. I’ve learned some discretion.

“Wow,” I muttered. “The Smurfs think I’m badass. Fantastic.”

Okay, so it wasn’t _that_ much discretion.

“Then will you lend me your finger?” asked Tiffany.

I blinked. “What?”

She pointed at me. I almost ducked, until I realized she was demonstrating.

“What are you going to do with it?” I asked.

“At least let me look in on the child,” she said. “The Queen cannot see me in my land, but neither can I see into hers.”

Unless you had something – or someone – linked to that land, of course.

"Only the kid?" I asked. Look, I never wanted to be the Winter Knight, but a job is a job, and I couldn’t just give away the secrets of the Nevernever, no matter how much it may have seemed like a good idea at the time.

“Only her,” said Tiffany. “You have my word.”

I unfurled my finger-guns. “Pew pew,” I said. It was better than “Pull my finger,” anyway. She took hold of one, and for a moment her eyes went distant.

Then Tiffany did something that terrified me.

She smiled.

“What was the Winter Lady’s command to you?” she asked.

I thought back. “‘Find her and stop her’,” I said warily.

“All right,” she said.

“All right?”

“You’ve stopped me,” said Tiffany. “Fairy land is safe from me for now.” She took the sleeping changeling off her back and carefully tucked the blankets around it more firmly. Then she handed it to the Feegles, who held it above their heads like the mosh pit at the world’s most age-inappropriate concert.

“You’re just going to—” I stopped, and looked at the tiny army of BAMFs beaming at me. “You know what? Never mind,” I said. I was maybe possibly sort of committing treason, at the request of someone I just met, for some baby I didn’t know.

I felt a lot better, actually.

I managed to stand up with a minimum of wobbling. “Tiffany Aching, it’s been – well, a headache.”

“Likewise,” she said, and offered me her hand. She had a nice firm shake.

I headed towards the gate to the Nevernever, but paused on the threshold and turned around. “What _did_ you do to Jenny Greenteeth?” I asked.

She raised her eyebrows as she clipped the frying pan to her belt.

I winced and rubbed my head. “Now that’s just embarrassing. How am I supposed to maintain my air of knightly superiority if I got taken down the exact same way?”

“If it makes you feel better, I was nine years old at the time,” said Tiffany.

“It does, actually,” I said. I shook my finger at her. “And stay out!”

I stepped back into the heart of Winter, rounded up my horse, and rode back to Maeve’s court, mission accomplished.

I very carefully did not look behind me the whole way.

~*~*~*~

“Lucy, I’m home!” I announced as I threw open the doors to Maeve’s court. Always be confident. That’s the key to a good bluff.

Of course, I don’t really have the best track record when it comes to lying. Then again, neither do the Sidhe, being completely incapable of uttering untruths. Wordplay and misdirection were their bread and butter. For now, they had to be mine, too.

God, I was hungry.

Maeve sneered at me. “Were you successful?” she asked.

“I was,” I said. “I turned her back at the gate. Eventually.” Was that a flash of movement at the corner of my eye? I didn’t look. Instead, I turned to Jen, rubbing the side of my head. The pain had returned on the ride home, but it wasn’t nearly as bad. “You could have told me about the frying pan.”

“Where’s the fun in that?” she murmured.

“Excellent,” said Maeve, donning the serial killer Cheshire cat grin again. “I—” She stiffened, her emerald cat-eyes going wide.

“Um,” I said. “Did anyone else just hear a moo?”

“ _What_ ,” screeched Maeve.

A herd of cows burst through the doors – pitch-black, flame-breathing cows whose hooves didn’t touch the ground. Sidhe scattered before them like chaff in the wind. Tiny figures darted in and out of the herd, whipping them with tiny switches, and incidentally stealing anything that wasn’t nailed down.

_“Yippee-ki-yay, mumajuma!”_

_“Git along, little doogies!”_

_“Cry havoc and unleash the coo-beasties o’ war!”_

“Johnny Cash called,” I yelled at Jen, as I jumped from a table to a ceiling buttress. “He wants his devil’s herd back!"

“Fool,” she shouted back, as she snaked up a chandelier. “Those are the cattle of Dáire! What have you done?!”

All I knew about Dáire was that he was wildfae and not someone to tangle with. Oh, and that he was apparently extremely protective of his cattle. Like, world-war-levels of protective. Mab had tried to steal one of his bulls once. It didn’t end well.

“The cows are _not my fault_!” I shouted. “But I will gladly serve as Maeve’s emissary if she thinks she has been stampeded without provocation!”

Maeve let out a scream like a scorched bobcat and tried to pick off Nac Mac Feegle with flying globs of ice – killer snowballs, whee – but they were either too fast or she was too afraid of tipping one of the cows. Then she spun around suddenly.

“With me!” she snapped. She leapt over the herd easily and landed by her throne. Jen and I shimmied down from our perches and followed her not too closely as she stormed down a hallway and through a wall.

She stopped in front of an obsidian cradle. Her hands tightened on the rim, her fingernails scouring lines into the rock.

A baby slept in a pink blanket covered in embroidered ducks. It was an ugly wrinkled little thing, with a tuft of green hair.

She turned and slammed me into the wall, my feet dangling a foot above the ground, full-on Darth Vader.

“ _You did this_ ,” she snarled.

“I didn’t,” I choked out. _This is a counselor ship! We’re on a diplomatic mission to Alderaan!_ “I swear on my power, I had nothing to do with the cows or the changeling!”

She let go of me, and I dropped to the floor in a crouch. A single piece of chalk fell off the edge of the cradle and broke. I picked up one half and held it out to her.

She stared at it as emotions flashed across her face – rage, humiliation, and oddly, disappointment – then snatched it from my hand and crushed it between her fingers.

“Take care of this,” she snarled at me, and swept out, Jen trailing at her heels.

~*~*~*~

I walked to the standing stones this time. Apparently I wasn’t as good a ride as Cattle Rassler Smurf, Destruction of Public Property Smurf, and Disturbing the Quin’s – _Queen’s_ – Peace Smurf, because the changeling woke up and started to cry before I got there.

I didn’t blame her. I had no idea what the hell I was doing. My theoretical knowledge of babies consisted mainly of “Don’t drop them.” My practical experience was limited to not moving out of the way fast enough before Michael could briefly flirt with insanity and deposit a fun-sized Carpenter into my arms when his own were occupied.

The only time I had gotten to hold my daughter, she had been considerably bigger.

I pushed that thought of my head. My world right now was snow and ice and shame and a rumbling stomach.

I fished the remaining half of the piece of chalk – the one that had been left on the changeling’s cradle – out of my pocket and wrote on the far side of one set of trilithons.

_Tiff – Time to play Let’s Make a Deal._

It wasn’t a big piece, and most of it crumbled away as I scrawled the last letters. There was enough chalk dust clinging to my fingers to wipe it off in the sign of a faint H.

There was a faint flicker from between the stones again. I was prepared this time when I stepped over the threshold to Tiffany’s world – and then nearly stumbled because I _didn’t_ lose any of my power this time.

She had invited me in. She was either very brave or very stupid.

Which didn’t explain why _I_ was the one who felt nervous.

I didn’t drop the baby, though.

The snow tried to follow me out again, but I commanded most of it back through the gateway with a thought. You don’t cross a threshold and go around tracking stuff all over people’s nice carpets – or lawns – just because you’re the Winter Knight. I ended up with only a little circle about six inches deep surrounding me.

I leaned against a standing stone and adjusted the bawling baby. A foul odor arose. Well, that explained at least part of the crying. “And I thought they smelled bad on the outside,” I muttered. “Wait, no, that’s kind of creepy. Sorry, kid.”

“You should give her head more support,” said Tiffany, from right beside me. _Gah._

She was alone, that I could see, but had brought the frying pan. I was touched to see she had it in the At Rest position, though.

“Good morning!” I said, as I awkwardly tried to shift the changeling. “Nice of you guys to drop by.”

Tiffany raised an eyebrow and gave me a look last seen on Señora FitzSimmon’s face in sophomore year Spanish when I had written _Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die_ for every answer on a pop quiz. Damn, but she had a good glare.

"It’s hilarious in context,” I said. “How’s the kid? Uh, the other kid.”

“Young Letty’s been doing fine,” said Tiffany. “She just started teething.” She smirked the proud smirk of the adult who is able to return a screaming baby to its parents at any time whatsoever.

“Has it been long?” I asked. One day – ish – in the Nevernever equaled God-knows-what somewhere else.

“Six months,” said Tiffany. She frowned at me and the changeling. “Aren’t you going to change her?”

“Uh,” I said. “That’s the thing.”

Tiffany uncouched the frying pan. “If you summoned me here to change this baby's nappy, there will be a _reckoning_ ,” she said flatly.

“I was told to take care of her,” I said.

Tiffany lowered the frying pan.

“If she stays in the Nevernever, she can be summoned to court at any time. The same with my world. It’s... not a good place to be.”

“You want me to take her back to the Chalk,” said Tiffany.

I smiled crookedly. “I figured _someone_ should be able to get out, right?”

Tiffany stared at me for a second. “Someone wise once told me,” she said, “that we’re the ones who watch the edges.”

“The edges?”

“Between life and death, this world and the next, night and day, right and wrong,” said Tiffany. “We open the doors that need opening. We make the hard decisions that need making.”

“Those kinds of decisions wear on you after a while,” I said. “Until you can’t see the edge anymore.”

“That’s why we all watch each other,” she said. “The thin black line.” 

I looked back down at the changeling. “It’s a lot to ask. She has a choice when she’s older – human or Sidhe.”

Tiffany waited silently.

“She should always have that choice,” I said.

Tiffany nodded. “What’s her name?”

I blinked. “I’m not really—”

“You’re the one who has to take care of her,” said Tiffany. “If you name something, you have a responsibility for it. I see no reason that it shouldn’t work in the opposite direction.”

“Huh,” I said. I looked down at the changeling. “Meryl,” I said.

“That means ‘bright sea,’ in the old tongue of the hills,” said Tiffany. “It’s a good name.”

“It belonged to a very brave young woman,” I said. "Like her."

“She’ll have a good home,” said Tiffany. “I’ll see to it.” She said it calmly, with absolute implacability. I would not want to be the one responsible for not giving Meryl a good enough home.

Tiffany started to hold out her arms, but I held Meryl back.

“The thing is,” I said, “She’s one of the Sidhe – or might be, one day.”

Tiffany tilted her head to one side, then nodded. “She shouldn’t start her life beholden,” she said. “There must always be balance.”

“An exchange,” I said.

“You killed for your daughter,” she said. “What do you hold at equal value for Meryl?”

I had once told the Merlin that no human life was worth less than any other. Meryl was a changeling, but that didn’t really matter. How did you put a price on someone’s worth?

My stomach rumbled. Oh, well. When in Rome.

I told the truth.

“I’d kill for some cheese,” I said.

~*~*~*~

In exchange for fostering one changeling, Tiffany Aching sent me three wheels of cheese, two jars of fruit preserves, a crock of buttermilk, and a terrifying bottle of Special Sheep Liniment, suitable for exceeding the legal limit on a contact high or making a Molotov cocktail potent enough to take out, say, Arctis Tor.

I thought there had been something that looked vaguely like gorgonzola, but either someone had eaten it or it had wandered off on its own.

Someone – or multiple small someones – had helped themselves to a few samples before the food got to me, though I assumed the half-used pack of tobacco was supposed to make up for that. I didn’t need the tobacco, but saved it in case I ever had to trade it for the Sidhe equivalent of a shiv or whatever.

Oh, and I got two home-made pizzas. No tomatoes, but they had a beer-dough crust and were covered in an inch-deep layer of shredded cheese, sausage, and thick slabs of back bacon. They were still warm. Tiffany had probably told them she would be _very disappointed_ if they lost any kinetic energy. Or had just threatened them with her frying pan.

I stared at the pizzas, mouth watering. Then I gathered in my will, picked up the second pizza, and set it aside to give to the Za Lord’s Guard. A liege had certain duties, after all.

The rest was mine, though. _All mine_.

~*~*~*~

Maeve did not take the matter of her missing kidnapping victim and court full of cows to Mab, surprise surprise, but she did make me clean up all the cow pies.

It was impossible to tell if she hadn’t figured out my ultimate role in the Great Baby Caper, or if she bought into Jen’s horror stories and thought I had been outmatched (which, okay, might have been kind of true), or if she just didn’t care, or if she was merely waiting for the day when she would take horrible, gory revenge.

I didn’t care. I’m used to living dangerously, and besides: I still had leftovers.

Although she did show up to loom at me.

Maeve’s eyes narrowed at the pizza halfway to my mouth. “Where did you get that?”

“I had it delivered,” I said.

She continued to stare me down.

“Would you like a piece?” I offered. She leaned close to me – too close: I almost went cross-eyed trying to avoid looking into her eyes, and her wintry breath frosted my eyebrows.

“Dresden,” she said softly. “You will pay.”

“I already did,” I said. “Probably should have tipped more, though.”

After a small eternity, she finally drew back. She sneered, snatched the slice out of my hand, and stormed off.

Something nudged my foot. I looked down. The prodigal cheese wheel had returned.

“I think I’ll call you Smurfette,” I said. It rolled in a circle and flopped over, which I took as an agreement. I turned back to my last slice of pizza.

It was roughly the same temperature as an iceberg, and the cheese had congealed. I ate it slowly, savoring every bite.

Mmm, cold pizza. Fairly won, freely given. Delivered straight from the thin black line.

Breakfast of champions.

**Author's Note:**

> Needless to say, it is my firm belief that Tiffany Aching should show up in _every_ work of literature and hit someone with a frying pan.
> 
> I started this before I read _Side Jobs_ , which is why Jenny Greenteeth appears to have made a miraculous and handwavey recovery, but it was too entertaining to leave her out of the crossover (see above).
> 
> For more information on why you shouldn't steal [Dáire mac Fiachna](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A1ire_mac_Fiachna)'s ~~coo-beasties~~ cows, see the _Táin Bó Cúailnge_ (Cattle Raid of Cooley). Some cultures write epic literature about manly warriors, sweeping romances, and monster fights; the medieval Irish write them about a teenaged Incredible Hulk versus Queen Snidely Whiplash and All the Cattle Rustlers Ever. It is one of the most awesome things I've ever read (especially in the Kinsella translation).
> 
> It is a complete coincidence that Smurfette could totally be foreshadowing [one potential downfall for Mab](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medb#Death), but if Harry really does defeat her with the power of cheese, you saw it here first. I mean, unless you already knew that story. Crivens.


End file.
